A challenge to newcomers!

[Finarvyn]

Hello. These boards have grown a lot over the past few months and it's great to see the enthusiasm.

However, one thing that I have noticed is that many of the threads here have remained layered by age with newer threads on top and older threads buried way at the bottom. What happens is that newcompers to a board often join and spend all of their time reading and replying to the newest threads and posts.

Often, older threads just sit there.

So, newcomers, here's what you should do: find a section of the boards that looks interesting and go back to the first threads there. Read some and see if anything is interesting enough for you to reply to. Stir things a little until some of the early theads pop up again to the top.

You don't have to take the time to look at every thread (unless you want to, of course) but you might be amazed at how much good stuff has been discussed over these past few months.

Enjoy the boards, and thanks for participating!

[Zulgyan]

Yeah! Don't be shy, don't lurk! We want to see what you got to say! No one will frown or laught upon it. Just say your mind.

Welcome all to the community!

[casey777]

Well for me this board doesn't seem to have a "view newest posts" feature. So I often wind up spending some time opening up each forum with a recent latest post in it and don't look as often at older threads. Mind, this way I do tend to actually look at most of the sub-forums.

[sham]

Hey! I resemble that remark!

I will certainly plunder the vaults, so to speak. I tried that very thing when I had some M&M rules questions, yet I missed about 50% of the topics I was looking for...

Luckily for me the awesome Zulgyan linked (hooked) me up!

I'm off now to "Stir things a little until some of the early theads pop up again to the top." as Fin requested.

~Sham

[jrients]

An excellent suggestion, Finarvyn! There's no reason to fear thread necromancy if we all stay on-subject. And a new poster may have an interesting question or valuable insight.

casey777 said:

Well for me this board doesn't seem to have a "view newest posts" feature.

From the main board listings scroll down past to the "Information Center". The last line in the subsection "Forum Statistics" is "View the 10 most recent posts of this forum."

[redpriest]

Challenge accepted, and mission accomplished on the General Board. Now I'm off to the others.

"View posts since last visit" sure would be a hand-ee link on the Index page. Yessiree, Bob. ;-)

[casey777]

jrients said:

From the main board listings scroll down past to the "Information Center". The last line in the subsection "Forum Statistics" is "View the 10 most recent posts of this forum."

Ah! Thanks, better than nothing. I rarely scroll down that far on main forum pages, mainly cos that's one place they usually stick ads.

[Finarvyn]

jrients said:

There's no reason to fear thread necromancy if we all stay on-subject. And a new poster may have an interesting question or valuable insight.

Well, I know on some boards there are rules about going too far back. The Forge comes to mind, and I know that they would rather see a new thread rather than bringing back an old one or Ron Edwards will rant at you and threaten to banish you forever from his board.

I think that OD&D is really more timeless than that and reviving old threads keeps things fresh. I guess the exception to that is if you have a real thought that doesn't really follow the rest of the thread, particularly if the current thread is already several pages long. I kind of hate 10-page threads because often something really neat gets lost in the middle of page 6 or something like that.

[driver]

Most boards either explicitly or implicitly discourage "thread necromancy." Now that I've seen this thread, I'll be happy to dredge up some old posts.

[Finarvyn]

Maybe someday it will be a problem, but my thought at the moment is that it's better to necro an old thread than to start another one just like it. :-)

[foster1941]

I don't like it when people Necro ephemeral or off-topic threads or when people necro threads without adding anything beyond "anybody have any more thoughts on this?" or "I agree." Other than that, though, on a fairly new and fairly small site such as this I've got no problem with continuing old threads in favor of starting new ones on the same topic, especially since the Site Boss prefers it that way.

[driver]

foster1941 said:

I don't like it when people Necro ephemeral or off-topic threads or when people necro threads without adding anything beyond "anybody have any more thoughts on this?" or "I agree." Other than that, though, on a fairly new and fairly small site such as this I've got no problem with continuing old threads in favor of starting new ones on the same topic, especially since the Site Boss prefers it that way.

I agree!

[Finarvyn]

Just noticing that a couple of recent threads are exactly like some old ones. (Foster was so kind as to link to them, then I locked the new one.)

Just a reminder to look around to see if what you want to discuss might be out there already....

[irdaranger]

I found this on page 11 of 15 (after I had already taken the initiative to do this very thing). Maybe it should be a sticky, or part of a larger "Board Rules" document? (If it already is I missed it -Sorry).

[Drohem]

Challenge accepted! More to come.....